• Is Apple Thinking Too Small With Siri?
    The New York Times’ Farad Manjoo isn’t super impressed by Apple’s vision for the future of Siri. At its WWDC conference, this week, “The way Apple presented the changes, with each Siri advance positioned as a feature of one of Apple’s devices, left unclear what Apple’s ultimate aims were for the voice assistant,” Manjoo writes. To boot, “The new features fall short of remaking Siri into something fundamentally different from what it is today.
  • Domino's Testing 'Zero Click Order' And Other Mobile Novelties
    Among other mobile innovations, Domino’s is testing a “zero click order” -- which would simply require customers to launch the Domino's app to order a pie -- and “on-time cooking.” With the use of a GPS tracker, the latter feature would prevent employees from making a customer’s order until he or she is in close proximity to their local store.
  • What Surprises Are Apple Planning For WWDC?
    Ahead of WWDC, The Verge considers what Apple is going to unveil at its big software conference, this week. “We have some idea of what’s to come,” it writes. “A lot of it has to do with Siri … like a lot this year, which should be interesting after months of bot and AI news from basically every major player in tech.” Meanwhile, “One year after launch, Apple Music is in store for its first revamp.”
  • Blippar Unveils "Blipparsphere" Visual Browser
    London startup Blippar just unveiled the “Blipparsphere” -- a “visual browser” that uses machine learning to recognize real-world objects. “To use it, users fire up the iOS or Android Blippar app and point their smartphone camera at any object,” Business Insider reports. “The app then uses Blippar's ‘proprietary knowledge graph’ to analyze the object's characteristics and suggest what that it might be.”
  • Winnie Is An App For Busy Parents
    TechCrunch takes a look at Winnie a new app that helps parents find nearby kid-friendly places and events. “The idea is to make going out with your little ones less stressful, whether you’re just running errands around town or traveling to a new city,” it writes. “This sort of useful information for parents isn’t collected in a structured manner today.”
  • Messaging Startup Line Readies IPO
    Messaging-app maker Line is planning to raise more than $900 million in a big, globe-spanning IPO. Listing in Tokyo as well as New York, the offering would value the startup at more than $5 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. “Owned by South Korean internet company Naver Corp., Line, with 218 million monthly active users, operates Japan’s most popular mobile messaging app.”
  • Google Gives iOS New 'Motion Stills' App
    Google just launched Motion Stills -- a new iOS app that stabilizes Live Photos so that they can be turned into shareable GIFs and video clips. “Google may well end up adding the technology into its other applications, like the Google Photos cloud-based photo storage app,” VentureBeat reports. “The app works offline, and you don’t need to sign in to any service in order to use it.”
  • Slack Makes Voice-Calling Feature Official
    Slack if officially rolling out voice calling, this week. “There’s nothing wrong with typing in direct message or channels, or even sending the occasional GIF when words fail you, but sometimes the direct approach is best,” The Next Web writes.   “After ‘months of testing’ the feature dropped today for all Slack users, no matter where you use the platform (Web, desktop or mobile).”
  • Verizon Submits Second-Round Bid For Yahoo
    Verizon on Monday was expected to submit a second-round bid of about $3 billion for Yahoo’s core internet business, The Wall Street Journal reports. That’s a lot lower than Yahoo was expecting. As recently as April, Yahoo was reportedly holding out for between $4 billion and $8 billion.
  • Google Adds App-Uninstall Manager To Play Store
    Google has quietly added an uninstall manager to the Play Store. “It works by suggesting a user uninstalls apps that have not been used for a while, because they're taking up space which could be used by other apps or games,” AndroidPolice reports. “It also displays how much space each unused app is using, and how much is needed for the thing that the user wants to install.”
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